Trouble At Sirius Seven
by The Autumn Witch
Summary: A short story about a small adventure of a Rebellion solo mission.


"Trouble At Sirius Seven"

Winter slowly throttled down her XJ-4 Hornet to sub-light speed less than half a parsec away from the coordinates that her superiors had given her. The silent vacuum of space keeping the whining of her engines secret impressed upon her how alone she was in the middle of dead space. Her black XJ's obsidian coloured hull and lack of running lights added to the stealthy nature of her mission.

There was supposed to be a band of separatists massing near the moon of Serious Seven and by pulling out of hyperspace so far from the target gave her a little reaction time just in case her superiors intelligence was off. Sure enough, her instruments was showing at least twelve smaller ships and one ship at least big enough to be considered cruiser class. She wasn't expecting the larger vessel so she fine tuned her sensors to focus on the unexpected ship. A cold sweat formed on her forehead when the sensors indicated the larger vessel was a Zerlonian Super-Cruiser.

Zerlonian? Holy crap! What the hell were the separatists doing with a Zerlonian ship? As far as she knew Zerlonians haven't been in this part of the galaxy for at least fifty years. Even though using the record function mode on her sensors would create a bit of subspace noise she decided to risk it. Headquarters would never believe that she discovered Zerlonians this close to core worlds without definite proof. So holding her breath she switched to record mode.

Nervously she glanced at her sensors hoping the none of the separatists would immediately go into attack mode. Perspiration dripping down her face underneath her flight helmet she slowly breathed a sigh of relief. So far everything seemed calm and quiet. She honestly didn't know the limitations of Zerlonian technology so switching to record mode was a bit of a blind risk.

The Zerlonians were a odd cross breed of insectoids and mammals. What she knew about them was from what she had learned about them back in the Academy. Generations ago two different, advanced species had been able to interbreed. The end result was a new species which possessed the incredible speed and strength inherited from insectoids and the cunning intelligence inherited from advanced mammalian species. They were about the same size of most humanoid species but weighed a lot less due to their exoskeletons. They were also absolutely merciless and fearless.

Many years ago the insectoids invaded Republic space. The resulting war lasted over two hundred standard years. At the end of the conflict they were seemingly posed to win the war and suddenly without warning or explanation they withdrew to their space and hadn't been heard of since. After the withdrawal, most of the humanoid species banded together to create and form a loose Coiliton and worked together to build up technology and military might as to be better prepared if the insectoids returned.

Winter was becoming more and more uneasy. It made no sense at all. The insectoids had a solid reputation of never dealing with humanoids directly. Add that to the fact that they were apparently dealing with a bunch of separatists and the conclusion was nothing but bad news for the Rebellion.

As uncomfortable as it made her, Winter needed to get closer to the Zerlonian vessel for a more complete data analysis. There was no way she could make the jump to hyperspace and not give up her location so running silently as she could at sub-light speeds was her only option. However, the thought did occur to her to actually immediately go back to headquarters and report her findings. The truth of the matter was, even though she figured herself to be one of the best fighter pilots in this part of the galaxy, she was outnumbered and outgunned by the separatists alone, not to mention the Zerlonian wild card vessel. After a few moments of deep consideration, she decided the best course of action would be to head back to headquarters but instead of executing a complete reversal of course, she would plot her jump to hyperspace to go as near the enemy ships as possible and record all the data she could.

It would be a tricky jump. If any of the rouge vessels were half way expecting any trouble they could easily sabotage her rout by placing a few unexpected mines or missiles in her path. Which by the way would make for a very bad day indeed.

After quietly inputting her path into the hyperdrive nav-unit, Winter did a quick check off of all systems. Everything seemed to be in tip-top shape but the XJ's core temperature was a little cooler than she liked. She had been sitting out in empty space now for at least a few hours running quiet so it was expected that her outer hull would be a bit on the chilly side.

Everything was entered, all systems were primed to go so there was nothing to do but push the main ignition control switch. She had done this type of thing hundreds of times before but for some reason she had more than the normal amount of butterflies batting her insides around. Was she missing something? Had she forgot something simple? What the hell was wrong with her? Shaking her heads as to clear the doubts away she hit the ignition switch.

Her ship ferociously growling to life lurched forward to what she thought would be a hyperspace tunnel but instead it catapulted forward about two thousand clicks and stuttered to a dead stop. Instantaneously all engine and thrust systems were offline. Dozens of alarms and indicators were beeping out of control as the main computer tried to analyze the problem.

Winter nearing panic mode, was taking in as much as she could. Subspace systems were ok but main engines were completely offline and were automatically trying the re-sequence patterns. Sparing a glance at sensors her worst fear was realized, six of the dozen spiritists ships were making a bee line to her location.

Immediately and without hesitation Winter activated all weapon systems however she kept most of her focus on trying to reboot the hyperdrive nav-unit. She knew it would take the separatists at least five minutes to reach her at top sub-light speed and they were unlikely to use hyperdrive as it would take even longer as they would have to also program their hyperdrive nav unit. Sudden beeping on her main view screen affirmed that all weapons were up and running.

She had twelve ion torpedoes and almost unlimited amount of blaster rounds. The standard XJ-Hornet came with two blaster cannons but her XJ-4 came with four standard cannons. She had also made some modifications that allowed her to fire in nearly perfect automatic mode as long as she didn't fire for more than thirty seconds otherwise she would risk a burn out. She had also paid three mouths salary to install a shield booster that gave her more than ten times the normal XJ shield rating. Being a mid-ranking flight officer (Commander) that came to a pretty penny! She also had one more trick up her sleeve, even though cloak technology was still not feasible on small one-man fighters she had been able to install a holographic manipulator that would for fractions of a second bend light in such a way that her ship would appear slightly in a different location to both manual and computer aiming systems. Of course none of this would do her any good if she couldn't get the beast of ship to actually move anywhere!

Since she could activate her hyperdrive standing still or in motion, she decided it would best to make a retreat and try to put more distance between herself and the oncoming enemy ships. Slowing pushing the subspace throttle forward the XJ moved silently but powerfully forward. "Thank the Gods!" she thought, at least she could still move at sub-light speeds now. However, the hyperspace-nav unit was still showing all sorts of error codes, most of which she had never seen before. The only thing she could come up with on the fly was maybe she had an over-cooled system from sitting silent for so long. So hopefully any type of engine activity, including sub-light running, would warm her system up enough to make the jump. Unfortunately, that meant the safe bet would be to totally reboot the hyperspace-nav unit but that would take at least ten minutes and she doubted the oncoming separatists would take that long to get there. Well it looks like she was going to get some fresh battle experience.

Looking at the sensor scopes she noticed the enemy was closing the gap so she increased the sub-light throttle to maximum and hit the reboot switch on the hyperspace nav-unit. She hated running away but the odds were very much against her. She figured she had good odds up to three or maybe four separatists but a full half dozen was just too much just for even her. The only thing that might save her is if any of the enemy pilots were green and the fact with six of them they would have to be careful not to shoot each other down.

More beeping on her sensor array indicated she could tell approximately what type of fighter she was up against. Letting out a sigh of relief, she determined that four of the ships were older fighter units used by the Empire about two technical generations ago, which wasn't that unusual as most of the separatists usually had older outdated vessels. The remaining two ships however were not that old, one of them was even a predecessor to her XJ class.

The hyperspace nav-unit indicated three minutes until a completed reboot but it looked like the enemies ships where just about two minutes away. And right on cue alarm whistles were blaring away as the separatists sent their first volley of fire power her way.

Instinctively Winter pulled the XJ in a hard port roll looping around to face the oncoming enemy but at a lower altitude and luckily for her, due the distance, all the enemy blaster fire passed harmlessly. As soon as she was in attack formation she launched two ion torpedoes. From this far away they had a better chance than blaster fire plus she didn't want to give up that she was running with four cannons yet. To her surprise, one torpedo contacted with an enemy vessel and with a hot white explosion rendered his shields mostly useless but to her chagrin it stayed on track quickly closing the gap.

"Well in for penny in for a pound" Winter said to herself as she pushed throttle to full and gently pulled the trigger on her two main blaster cannons while at the same time again rolling hard to port trying to avoid enemy fire. The arch of her blaster fire connected with two enemy ships, one which was the initial ship she hit with the ion torpedo. With a slight delay the wounded vessel vaporized into empty space but unfortunately some enemy fire made it through to her starboard wing. Luckily for her the extra money she paid for the extra shields paid off and the enemy fire was absorbed harmlessly though her shield level dropped to ninety-eight percent.

Pushing her pitch downward her XJ expertly dived then it rolled back up to full attack formation. As soon as she was level with her oncoming adversaries she opened fire will all four cannons in an short fully automatic volley sending a blistering arch of blaster fire directly through the core of the enemy formation. The pure force of her four cannons was just too much for one of the older vessels and it exploded into hot dust in cold space. Now she was down to four enemy ships.

Just as she was about to go into her next attack run the main canopy of her ship was covered in a blaze of enemy blaster fire. Her XJ shuttered and nearly stalled as the advanced shield system tried to cope with the incoming enemy fire. But again, her money was well spent and the XJ quicky came back to life and she rolled through two defensive rolls.

A few of the enemies must have overrated the damage done to her ship as they made no obvious attempt to keep clear of her defensive tactics. Quickly and without thinking Winter opened fire with a volley of four ion torpedoes and two more enemy ships disappeared for good into a huge blast of ion energy. That left two but they were the more modern ships and now they had a lot more room to maneuver within.

A new beeping sound went off on her sensor array that she recognized as the hyperspace nav-unit. She had a choice, she could try to duke it out with the two remaining ships and have a clear space for the hyperspace jump or she could just retreat and try a dirty jump hoping that any enemy fire wouldn't disrupt the jump. Before she could do anything alarms sounded warning of a torpedo attack. "Damn!" she thought, "They must be well funded to have effing torpedoes!"

Pulling up hard she pushed her throttle to max with such ferocity the g-force almost overwhelmed her even in her state of the art pressure suit. She didn't think she could survive a direct torpedo hit even with her doctored-up shields. Ducking and jiving she was doing all she could to avoid being hit. Her hands gripped the cannon control and let off a rear volley in full automatic mode. The red blaster fire moving amazingly fast out of the cannons sliced a path through both torpedoes that were tailing her. Oh, that's right she forget to mention she customized her cannons so that they could fire from the aft. However, the resulting explosion of the torpedoes knocked her XJ out of control and it tumbled helplessly through space as the onboard computers tried to bring the vessel back under control. For the first time Winter was truly scared. Tumbling out of control made her an easy target and with her shields down to twenty-five percent she knew she had to get out of there soon.

Even though she was tumbling through space, her weapons were still functioning so out of desperation she fired all the remaining ion torpedoes hoping eight torpedoes would keep the remaining separatists busy long enough for her to regain control.

Sure enough the two remaining enemy ships went into full defensive runs and were actually having a pretty hard time avoiding the torpedoes. In the end one pilot made the jump to hyperspace to avoid having to deal with the hell fire that rained down on it.

She was down to only one enemy ship and she was back in control of her ship. Bringing it back into the foray she pushed forward to an attack run hoping the separatist was too occupied avoiding torpedoes to notice her. She was unlucky this time.

The enemy pilot must have guessed her plan and was heading right to her with four torpedoes trailing him. He was trying to use her own weapons against her!

Quickly she pulled to starboard on full throttle, she knew the torpedoes wouldn't purposely hit her but if she was between them and their target she could easily get hit. The four torpedoes missed her by less than ten meters and flew harmlessly away. Unfortunately, they were also out of thrust and were no longer a threat to the remaining vessel and veered into empty space.

"Damn!", she exhaled, she was down to just blaster fire now and didn't know what her adversary had left. Quicker than she expected the remaining ship pulled in behind her and without thinking Winter activated the holographic manipulator and for a brief moment it appeared she had slightly pulled right. As if on cue, the last separatists let loose a nasty rain of blaster fire all of which was destined to miss the mark. In reality Winter pulled left and executed one of the fastest loops she ever had and ripped off an unholy barrage of cannon fire on fully automatic mode. The last enemy fighter never saw it coming and was soon transformed into liquid-hot plasma floating through space.

Without hesitating and simultaneously breathing a sigh of relief, Winter punched the hyperdrive nav-unit. She was soon rewarded to the visual spectacle of a hyperspace tunnel.

The trip home seemed to take longer than normal but soon she slowed out of hyperdrive and was within sight of her base.

Her communicator snapped alive with "This is outpost Sigma-Two. Fighter vessel please identify yourself and destination."

"The is Commander Winter Eyther returning from reconnaissance mission alpha-echo-echo one." Winter replied.

"Ah Commander Winter we were wondering what happened to you. Welcome back. What took you so long?"

"Oh I ran into some trouble... will fill you in when I check in."

"Affirmative Commander Eyther, see you when you get in."

And with that Winter slowed and prepared for landing.


End file.
